152 NATURAL HISTORY ESSAYS 



being often imported into Europe. A light platform 

 laid over the pit is covered with mud, and the whole 

 made as natural as possible so that the rhinoceros — 

 or tapir — approaching the spot may be tempted to 

 have a roll in the delicious (?) mud — thus snapping 

 the platform, and sliding sans ceremony to the 

 bottom of the pit. The earth in front of the animal's 

 head is then carefully dug away and a cage of rattan- 

 ropes let down ; the frail intervening partition being 

 broken through, the animal rushes into the cage and 

 is secured. Newly caught tapirs are inclined to bite, 

 but soon become tractable : one which the present 

 writer saw in the Antwerp Zoological Gardens in 

 1899 was quite tame, allowing himself to be pulled 

 about in any direction. Probably this little fellow 

 was some five months old, his spotted coat being 

 in the transitional state of semi-obliteration already 

 mentioned ; in the same collection was a magnificent 

 adult specimen in excellent health, as its coat of jet 

 black and pearl grey amply testified.^ 



A Malay tapir, perhaps about two years old, was 

 received in Liverpool in the autumn of 1904 and 

 sold to a well-known zoological garden. This animal 

 was a very interesting subject to study. In the early 

 morning, true to the habits of the jungle he had left 

 for ever, he was active, uttering a peculiar whistle 

 as he paced his cage, his shapeless head swaying up 



1 Renshaw: Notes on the Zoological Collections of Amsterdam, 

 Rotterdam and Antwerp : Zoologist, 1899. A Malay tapir was living in 

 the Melbourne Zoo in 1900 : and tico in the Gardens at Breslau in 1902. 



